By Conrad Black
It is painful to reflect on this, but I think we are disserving ourselves if we do not recognize how absurd this country appears to many well-disposed and intelligent foreign onlookers. We are now seen as the most absurdly woke and politically correct (and therefore foolish) country in the world, and the country with the highest suicide rate in the world because our crumbling health-care system now champions the virtues of early death, as well as being one of the most unsafe advanced countries for Jews to live in, because of widespread antisemitic bigotry.
The latest nonsensical saga is about the status of Alberta, which has generated a number of queries to me from U.S. and European media friends who are legitimately interested in Canada and hope that it will step up and make the contribution that it could to intelligent governance in the world. I have responded as sensibly as I can that if Alberta is not allowed to export its oil and natural gas and satisfy foreign demands for it, there is likely a majority in that province who would prefer to secede from Canada. Albertans are loyal Canadian federalists and have carried water on both shoulders in taxes and equalization and transfer payments. But they are aware that if they did secede, they could dispense with any income taxes at all and would be the wealthiest per capita petrostate in the world, with a fine agricultural and some manufacturing economy, as well. Edmonton and Calgary would probably grow to have populations greater than Toronto and Montreal within a decade.
But my foreign friends are incredulous as I unravel the facts for them that the Native people are contending in the courts, so far successfully, that Alberta has no right to hold a referendum on the issue of secession without the authorization of the tiny minority of Albertans who are Indigenous. At the same time, other Indigenous groups are petitioning the courts to prevent construction of the pipeline upon which the result of an Alberta secession referendum, should it eventually be permitted to take place, will probably depend. These facts have been publicized in Canada, but I see very little collective self-awareness of what a uniquely asinine state of affairs this is.
I had a rare and distasteful recourse to a rhetorical question at the outset of a column in this newspaper nine years ago over the Ktunaxa Nation case, in which a report that a deceased high priest of the local Native band of 800 people had allegedly had a dream that if a projected comprehensive year-round ski area was built in the Kootenays, the spirit of the grizzly bear would desert the mountain and deprive his band of its religious inspiration, and that this case was proceeding to the Supreme Court of Canada. Despite my aversion to rhetorical questions, I asked: “Are we all mad?” The Supreme Court did reject the claim and allowed the project to proceed but did not suggest that it was frivolous or vexatious litigation.
Now, because of our multi-level legislative cowardice before the Charter of Rights regime that permits every court in the country to masquerade as an autocratic legislature and ignore the text or absence of existing law for alleged reasons of modernization to conform with human rights as defined (by the judges in each case), we have brought the Governments of Canada to a standstill. Courts will decide whether Native claims of ubiquitous sacred burial sites and other conjured antiquarian rights prevent construction of a pipeline, without which our richest per capita and fourth-largest province might choose to secede from the country. All will be in abeyance while other courts determine whether the 3.5 per cent minority of First Nations Albertans have a right of veto over holding a referendum on independence. Any other serious country in the world would have elaborated a suitable and equitable doctrine of eminent domain decades ago, to prevent spurious legal self-strangulation.
Of course, there is adequate demand for such a referendum in Alberta, and the First Nations population is no more important for these purposes than any other accumulation of 3.5 per cent of the people. It all reminds me of 50 years ago when a western Canadian relative who vehemently assured me that Quebec couldn’t secede no matter how many Quebecois voted to do so, because secession was illegal. I suggested that in such circumstances, the force majeure of arithmetic would prevail.
Canada also remains, to the best of my knowledge, the only country that removed its head of state because a public relations firm conducted an investigation that revealed that there was a toxic atmosphere in the office of the governor general. In general, removal of officials from high public offices requires serious statutory offences, such as the “treason and other high crimes and misdemeanours” cited by the Constitution of the United States for conviction in the impeachment trial of the president or other senior officials. I welcomed the elevation as governor general of former astronaut Julie Payette, and have no idea if she executed her office capably. But in a country where the governor general can be removed by a public relations firm, to quote Gen, Charles de Gaulle about the last president of the French Third Republic: “As chief of state, two things were lacking: he was not a chief and there was no state.”
We have certainly not sunk to the level of France in 1940 with the swastika flying atop the Eiffel Tower. But instead of truckling to the corrupt and unrepresentative Palestine Authority, our prime minister should focus on making Canada safe and congenial, to Jews and all Canadians. We are not now a serious country, and while aspects of that are amusing, it is a shaming fact.
First published in the National Post
4 Responses
As usual Mr. Black is right on. Having served this country for 28 years in the CAF I find myself embarrassed to say I am Canadian. Ten years of Trudeau Liberals advised by Mr. Carney have brought us to economic and social ruin. The only country left in the world to push “net zero” to fight global warming plus runaway “wokeness” have made us a joke on the world stage.
We must help Alberta leave. It will be the only way to start a new country without the “Crown” keeping us in Slavery. This country is India. Go anywhere near southern ontario and it is Indians and muslims everywhere all the time. And Pride flags. Somehow I don’t think the new Oppressors will let those fly very long in Fordistan.
Can I leave with them?
As an unapologetic member of the US, I’m more than a little concerned over the behavior and politics of the Canadian government. We don’t need to think of our northern border as a confrontation area – but the tension is palpable. I’m all for Alberta seceding and waking up the rest of Canada – but I’m not sure it can happen anymore. And I don’t see Alberta becoming a part of the US as a “51st” state – they have too many woke problems and we don’t need them to add to ours.